Hundreds get free medical care at Convention Center clinic

Desmond Mayfield arrived at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center at 7:45 Tuesday morning, more than three hours before Hall J opened its doors to the day’s first round of patients. He wanted to beat the crowd.

View full sizeJohn McCusker, The Times-PicayuneChelsea Parker checks Harry Chestnut's blood pressure at the clinic sponsored by The National Association of Free Clinics.

Mayfield was one of hundreds who converged on the center to seek care from volunteer medical personnel, who are staffing a free two-day clinic that continues today.

The makeshift health center, organized by the National Association of Free Clinics, is offering primary and preventive care to hundreds of uninsured or underinsured individuals, as well as referrals to free and community-based clinics in New Orleans. Available services include blood pressure checks, EKGs, glucose tests for diabetes, urinalysis and HIV tests.

“The need was so overwhelming here,” said Nicole Lamoureaux, executive director of the NAFC. The organization has hosted free clinic conventions across the United States, and decided to return to New Orleans after a 2009 event drew upwards of 9,000 people.

More than 600 patients shuffled through the convention hall Tuesday, where they were supplied a battery of diagnostic tests as needed. With 76 curtained partitions covering more than 130,000 square feet, the sprawling temporary clinic became the largest of its kind in the U.S., according to the NAFC.

Lamoureaux said the free clinic would highlight the needs of those who have fallen through the holes of America’s “safety net.”

View full sizeJohn McCusker, The Times-PicayuneNursing student Ashley Magner talks with patient Gordon Peterson at the free clinic at the Morial Convention Center.

A native of New Orleans, Mayfield left for Tulsa, Okla., after the New Orleans Housing Authority, where he had worked for more than 18 years, slashed its workforce. His job in Tulsa as a maintenance repairman provided him with health insurance, but when Mayfield left the job to move back to New Orleans a few months ago, he lost those benefits.

Now between jobs, Mayfield, 44, has joined the ranks of the 820,000 Louisiana residents, roughly 19 percent of the state’s population, who lack health insurance. Less than a year ago, Mayfield’s laser-sharp vision began to blur, and he began to feel thirstier than usual. Mayfield said he didn’t know where to find free clinics in New Orleans before Tuesday. He left the center with a sheet of contacts.

Lamoureaux estimates that only 30 percent of patients she has spoken to are aware of those resources. “We have so many people who say, ‘I didn’t know I could go there,’” she said.

One of the objectives of the clinic is to better educate New Orleans residents about the resources available to them. They’re often playing catch-up; many of the patients who sought help at last year’s free clinic hadn’t seen a physician in years, said Rani Whitfield, a Baton Rouge family practice physician and the medical director of the New Orleans event.

Central City resident Gordon Peterson, who hadn’t been to a doctor since March 2006, said he simply didn’t have any problems.

“Ninety-eight percent of the time I’m up and running,” Peterson said. “That has kept me from going in.”

He decided to show up at the free clinic Tuesday out of suspicion that he might have high blood pressure or cholesterol levels, and to have his jaw X-rayed.

Without a primary care physician as a first point of contact, uninsured patients often wait to seek medical treatment until the problem is so severe that they wind up in the emergency room, or seek out specialists for problems that may be relatively simple, Whitfield said.

Almost 60 percent of the patients Tuesday afternoon said they didn’t have a primary physician or sought treatment in the emergency room whenever they had an ailment. The most common health issues were diabetes, heart and cholesterol problems, and depression — fairly consistent with the health issues that plague the greater population of Louisiana.